New Power

[Nick Ryder]

"Still looked pretty damn cool with a kilden though." Nick said with a smirk as he opened a tool case with the iljuna and pulled out a shiny silver box. "Built a new one the other night." he opened the box and revealed the twin blades with polished bronze and silver accents, small rivets held on leather grips and a set of jewel toned activator button that practically glowed. "One for you, one for me."

[Rebecca Talon]

Rebecca took it and tested the balance, "It is a fine kliden. Tradition dictates that you construct your own kliden. It is thought the process helps attune the crystal to you. The crystals start off without color, but it is the user that influences the color. For most it is blue or green. Sometimes other colors. Myself, I attune them yellow. An Ajem'dasis corrupts the crystal attuning it red."

[Nick Ryder]

"They're clear... for the moment." Nick said as he gestured and pulled his kilden to his hand. "Wore gloves and used a holographic interface to build them." he looked at his kilden and smiled. "You always took this more seriously than I did, until now. Training Kinsey sort of made me realize that I need to focus on the Iljuna more. With threats like Dominus, my dark double... it may be the only thing that I can use against him. The Ajem nearly killed me. I'm not looking for payback, but I am looking to fight fire with fire. And I'm just a man now. I'm not an Admiral or a President. First time in my life, I'm not defined by my title. Neither of us are. We have powers. We can do amazing things. I say we use them."

[Rebecca Talon]

Rebecca absently opened up the kliden to examine the crystal setting, "I'm truly impressed my friend. You have a gift. Most dasis take decades to learn to set a ijulna crystal so finely."

Already the crystal was gaining a yellow hue as she and the crystal interacted with the force that binded objects and living things together.

Sighing she gave Nick a humorless smile, "We do have an obligation don't we?"

[Nick Ryder]

"That we do." Nick said as he ignited his kilden and the blade shimmered from a clear white beam to a vibrant blue hue. "Like the man said, with great power comes great responsibility. As much as retirement 'sounds' awesome... there's still too much at stake. Not to say we have to work ourselves to death, but there are reasons why we're so damn hard to take off the board. I didn't spend nearly a year in a cell, being beaten and used for my power without taking some very long, hard looks at the universe and our place within it. In some ways, it was my dark year, when all the tricks and toys, all the little luxuries I afford myself, all the people I surround myself with were stripped away. I barely knew if my wife was alive. I barely knew if anyone I cared about was alive, or if they were the next to be literally fed into a furnace of my own creation."

He deactivated the kilden and hooked it onto his belt under his jacket. "Reason why I doubted a lot of things when I came back, was because I started to attune myself more to the living force, I saw things, felt things I never felt yet instinctively I think I've always felt. The darkness from the Imperium was always there and will always be here. It'll just change hands. I didn't come back traumatized, I came back with a new awareness and it took me a while to figure out my place in all of it. I had no idea you were back, yet I still felt your presence, I thought it was what the old masters spoke of becoming 'one' with the Iljuna. It's also why I've let Julie remain on the planet in exile. There's still darkness in her, but there's also light that's slowly but surely working its way through her. She'll never be like us. But that isn't such a bad thing. Black and white, the absence of light because it literally swallows all the light to the absolute nothing and everything of pure light. It's not sustainable. Black can become grey. White can become grey. So a medium, a balance between the two."

[Rebecca Talon]

"You can't have one without the other. There is no night without day. Good without evil. You would likely would have felt my presence even if I died. You Ijulna doesn't just disappear. A few centuries ago we would have called it our soul or spirit. Either way it is our essence manifested through the ijulna."

[Nick Ryder]

"A lot of things are making more sense lately since I started treating it more seriously." Nick agreed. "And I wouldn't be shocked if you were here in spirit, you and I have spent more time as friends than we haven't. Known each other most of our lives now. Your son's marrying my granddaughter. We're family in an actual sense not just the 'best friends as family' way. Speaking of... Alice and Angel have the 'mother of the groom' dress ready for you. With a few... appropriate accessories just in case the father of the groom and you... rekindle."

"Would not be the first time we've witnessed that." Natalia said with a chuckle and a wince. "Our parents were like inches from splitting, went to a family member's wedding... let's just say Tony and Nick had to hack the hotel's computer so we could get a room on the other side of the hallway."

"She was too nervous to do it, 'oh what if we get caught?'" Nick said with her high pitched tone of voice. "I'd just diiiiiee if they put us in hand cuffs'. Then she shut up when she saw the room we got."

"And I got soooo sick on mini bar chocolates... Tony kept trying to get one of his stupid bimbo girlfriends to come over and Nick wouldn't get off the comm with Julie and you." Natalia said with a roll of her eyes. "We probably could have stayed in our original room. Still... you were the second person he'd call after his girlfriend. I think you two were playing some simulation game at the time. Was too busy eating and watching movies to care."

"Top Gun... yeah... those were the days. Her high score still stands." Nick grumbled. "Nearly five frickin' decades and I still can't top it. And trust me I've tried."

[Rebecca Talon]

"Oh Milo and I are working things out. In the end it might be Splitsville, but there is a lot of trust lost, and needs to be regained."

[Nick Ryder]

"Well he's stubborn, that's for sure." Nick said with a sigh and crossed his arms. "Still, don't give up. Give him some time he'll either decide he's fine without you or he needs you more than he doesn't. Besides, like it or not my granddaughter is his daughter in law come the weekend. We're family now. And her ranch is kicking ass, always knew Yeoman training was a good path to entrepreneurship, if you can manage an Admiral, you can manage anything."

[Rebecca Talon]

She shrugged, "That's the rub isn't it? I pretend to die and leave him with a baby that isn't even his. I know Ethan will become his. I've seen it with old Ethan, but he's still getting used it."